Navigating Breast Cancer Screening in Rural Missouri: From Patient Navigation to Social Navigation

Jean Hunleth, Emily Steinmetz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

The National Cancer Institute recently identified rural cancer disparities as a priority issue, dedicating resources to rural cancer prevention, presenting opportunities and also risks. We bring an anthropological concept, social navigation, to bear on a popular public health intervention, patient navigation, increasingly proposed as an “evidence-based” approach to reducing health disparities. Our study of mammography in the Missouri Bootheel demonstrates how such interventions elide the shifting terrain and slow violence of rural health care where people must improvise care through trying out or sticking with providers, negotiating self-advocacy and deference, or changing screening timelines amidst structural constraints and rural stereotypes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)228-242
Number of pages15
JournalMedical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness
Volume41
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Keywords

  • Cancer screening
  • health inequalities
  • mammography
  • rural health

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